Small Group Adaptation: Providing Extra Practice for One Student
If you are working with a small group rather than an individual student, you can use strategies to help a student who may not be keeping up with the rest of the group. Appealing to the needs of students independently within the group is called differentiation.
Determine whether additional fluency practice is needed for one of the students in the group. The student’s situation can meet either of the following criteria:
- If reduction of pages has not been enough of an adjustment to allow that one student to gain fluency of the section by the end of the session.
- If there is a performance gap between students that requires extra assistance for one student, but not a reduction in the number of pages read for the entire group.
Following are some options for adding practice for one student who may be struggling to keep up with others in a small group.
Extra Questions Activity Option
You can have other students in your group do comprehension extension activities using prepared questions while you read with the student needing more practice. This will allow the other students to work on comprehension while you work with the student who needs the additional repetition.
Prior to the session, create a few questions based on the text your students have read to date. The following chart gives guidance on the types of questions you can create.
- Start with easier text-specific questions, and move to open-ended and inference questions as the school year progresses.
- More than one type of question can be asked at a time.
- Have the student use the book to locate the answers and supporting text evidence.
If more than one student is participating in this extra question activity, have students discuss their answers together and provide evidence from the text
to support their answers.
- Students can also use the book to ask each other questions and provide evidence from the text to support their answers.
Extra Reading With Fill-in-the-Blank Game
Provide the student needing extra practice with an additional opportunity (or two) to play “Fill-in-the-Blank” as the lead reader.
This can be done with the other group members participating in the game so that no additional materials (such as questions for the other students)
are needed.
Partner Up Other Students
Provide the student needing extra practice with an additional opportunity (or two) to play reading games with you while the other students partner up and
play a game with each other.
Have the other students play switch-off together (with or without dramatic voices) and allow them to self-monitor and assist each other as needed.
Modeling Good Readers
While the primary goal of Skill-Building Activities Part 1, is to practice fluent reading using multiple games, it is important to guide students in establishing routines of proficient readers.
Proficient readers continually use strategies that help them read words and understand what they read.
The Good Reader chart below visually depicts strategies that will help students figure out words and understand what they read. When a student gets stuck on a word, give them a moment to look at the word and try to figure it out. You might suggest that they “Give it a try”. If needed, touch the word in the text to help them focus, and see if they recognize any part of the word. Encourage students to re-read or read on to focus on the meaning of the text.
Classroom teachers will be instructing students on all the phonics pieces, tutors should simply encourage students to focus on the word itself to look for clues. If a student is still struggling provide the word for them, and have the student re-read the complete sentence.
While reading to and with the students, you have the opportunity to influence their independence in reading by doing a “think aloud” that demonstrates how these strategies are used.
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Section 4 – Skill Building Activities, Part 2: Review/Reflect and Quality Talk